2 Responses to “Heath Mullikin on New People”

Forest McDermott
February 12, 2013

So very true. I have told congregations that each and every visitor is a gift from God and should be treated as a great and wonderful gift. They might not currently appear to be what we want, but we tend to only look at our short-term needs. God is looking after our long-term interests and might be sending us the most special person our congregation will need in five or ten years. Our job for now is to seriously attend to our responsibility to make disciples and help them develop the potential that God already knows exists within them and they are capable of achieving to God’s glory not ours.

Reminds me of a quote from Bonhoeffer in Life Together: “If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even where there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and difficulty… then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and riches which are there for us all in Christ Jesus” (p. 29)